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Studying the ‘cause of causes’ affecting cardiovascular health

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:08:47 +0000

Studying the ‘cause of causes’ affecting cardiovascular health Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/21/2025 - 08:08

Chris Quirk

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers find that socioeconomic status is a key indicator of heart health

Cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, significantly affects those of lower socioeconomic status. In addition, members of historically marginalized groups—including Black, Indigenous and Asian populations—suffer disproportionately. Therefore, public health advocates and policy makers need to make extra efforts to reach these populations and find ways to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease.

These are the findings of researchers Sanna Darvish and Sophia Mahoney, PhD candidates in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Integrative Physiology. Their recent paper on socioeconomic status and arterial aging—written with ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� co-authors Ravinandan Venkatasubramanian, Matthew J. Rossman, Zachary S. Clayton and Kevin O. Murray—was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Researchers Sanna Darvish (left) and Sophia Mahoney (right), PhD candidates in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Integrative Physiology advocate for making extra efforts to reach historically marginalized populations and find ways to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease.

Darvish and Mahoney conducted a literature review of cardiovascular disease, looking specifically at how it affects various demographics. Their focus was on two physiological features that are predictors of cardiovascular issues: endothelial dysfunction—a failure of the lining of blood vessels that can cause a narrowing of the arteries—and stiffening of arteries.

“It’s pretty well established that individuals of lower socioeconomic status have increased risk for many chronic diseases, but our lab focuses on the physiological and cellular mechanisms contributing to that increased risk,” Darvish explains. “We’re looking at what studies have been conducted, looking at blood vessel dysfunction, arterial dysfunction in these marginalized groups that then will predict their risk for cardiovascular disease.”

Exercise as therapy

Beyond the clinical findings, Darvish and Mahoney cite four social determinants of health regarding cardiovascular disease across ethnic and racial groups: environmental factors, like proximity to pollution or access to green spaces; psychological and social factors, such as stress or structural racism; health care access; and socioeconomic status.

While each of the four has different facets that contribute to overall cardiovascular health, the authors found that socioeconomic status was the “cause of causes,” and thus the most important indicator to examine in their goal of recommending effective therapies.

“It became clear to us that socioeconomic status really played a role in every single aspect of social determinants of health,” says Mahoney. “So, our paper naturally centered around socioeconomic status as we realized that it was the most integrated and affected the rest of the determinants of health.”

To help overcome the barriers to better cardiovascular health among those in lower socioeconomic groups, Darvish and Mahoney recommend exercise.

“Exercise is well established as first line of defense, especially aerobic exercise,” says Mahoney. “It’s easy for us to say that in Colorado, but there are plenty of barriers to people everywhere who do not have access to resources.”

“Exercise is well established as first line of defense, especially aerobic exercise,” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Sophia Mahoney. “It’s easy for us to say that in Colorado, but there are plenty of barriers to people everywhere who do not have access to resources.”

One option the researchers propose is high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which packs a robust aerobic effort into workouts as brief as five or 10 minutes. The authors also recommend inspiratory muscle strength training (IMST), during which users breathe into a simple handheld device that inhibits air flow and get a simulated aerobic workout that also strengthens the diaphragm. Previous research has demonstrated that just a few minutes of IMST therapy a day can reduce blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Reducing research barriers

One thing Darvish and Mahoney hope their study will do is galvanize researchers to include more diverse populations in their research. While investigating the existing literature for their review, the two were dismayed to find few studies that included or focused on populations from the lower socioeconomic echelons.

There are structural reasons for that, Darvish explains. Time is an issue, as those lower on the socioeconomic ladder often work more hours and have more demands on their non-work time. In addition, transportation can be an obstacle, as research facilities may not be near neighborhoods with more diverse populations. “We pay our participants an appropriate amount for their participation, but not all clinical trials do,” Darvish says.

“Another thing we are doing is instituting a lift service through our lab, to drive people in from their homes in Denver to our lab in Boulder, and we hope this will help improve access for more people to participate.”

Language barriers can be another impediment, as all release forms and study literature would need to be translated for those who don’t speak English. Darvish and Mahoney say it is important that researchers work to overcome these structural barriers. “Our lab is working to do all we can to reduce biases, and include these diverse populations,” says Mahoney. “We need to practice what we preach and start with ourselves.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers find that socioeconomic status is a key indicator of heart health.

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Using ‘mathy math’ to understand how people regulate their emotions

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 21:30:28 +0000

Using ‘mathy math’ to understand how people regulate their emotions Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/17/2025 - 14:30

Daniel Long

In a recent study, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Robert Moulder and colleagues find that individuals with trait neuroticism rarely modify how they respond to negative emotions

Emotions, like temperatures, go up and down. Yet everyone copes with these ups and downs in his or her own way. Some use the same emotion-regulation strategies over and over—read a book, take a walk, watch a movie—while others change which strategy they use depending on the situation.

Research scientist Robert Moulder of the University of Colorado Boulder Institute of Cognitive Science, along with Katharine E. Daniel, Matthew W. Southward, Jennifer S. Cheavens and Steven M. Boker, wanted to know why: Why do some people frequently modify their regulation strategies? Why do others reuse the same strategies? And are there benefits to both approaches?

Institute of Cognitive Science research scientist Robert Moulder, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, notes that "that there are some times when it makes sense to become more adaptive" in regulating emotions.

Difficult questions, these, not least because they seek to identify patterns in what seem like random human behaviors. Which is why Moulder was particularly well-suited to the job of answering them. With a background in both mathematics and psychology, he uses chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics to understand human systems. “The way I like to describe it, I am like Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, but for people instead of dinosaurs,” he jokes. “I do the ‘mathy math’ behind how psych works.”

Thanks to Moulder’s “mathy math,” he and his fellow researchers were able to reveal a key distinction between those who rarely change up their emotion-regulation strategies and those who do so often: trait neuroticism.

Trait vs. state

Neuroticism, Moulder says, refers to “someone's overall tendency to engage in and ruminate on negative emotions like getting angry, getting upset, being distrustful. You can think about it as the propensity of an individual to experience and act upon negative emotions.”

There are two categories of neuroticism: state neuroticism and trait neuroticism, the differences between which Moulder illustrates with an analogy to extroversion.

“A state personality would be, say, how extroverted you are right now, or how extroverted you are in two or three days,” he says. “Have you ever gone to a party and felt really engaged but afterwards felt dead? During that party your extroversion was higher than it normally would be, and afterwards, it was probably a little lower.”

Trait extroversion, on the other hand, takes the average of those individual moments over time. “It's kind of like your stable equilibrium,” says Moulder. “If you were going to describe to someone how extroverted you are, you'd be talking about your trait extroversion.”

The same thing goes for neuroticism. One person may have a high degree of neuroticism at any given moment but a low degree overall—high state, low trait—whereas another person may be exactly the opposite.

What Moulder and his colleagues found was that subjects with high levels of trait neuroticism tend not to experiment with their regulation strategies. “That means someone who is very high in neuroticism will consistently use the same tools over and over again, whether they’re working or not.”

A new mathematical model

Moulder and his colleagues arrived at these findings with the help of transition matrices, an analytical tool Moulder and Daniel developed in a previous paper.

Examples of transition matrices developed by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scientist Robert Moulder and his research colleagues.

“Why people do the things they do after a negative event has thousands of components,” Moulder says. “There was not a good method for measuring that. So, we made one.”

Transition matrices are rectangular grids of rows and columns that enable study subjects to keep track of which emotion-regulation strategies they use and when they use them.

A subject who got into an argument with her boss at noon and then took a walk, for example, would put a “1” in the box in her matrix associated with taking a walk. If she received an angry email from her boss an hour later and chose this time to call a friend, she would put a “1” in the box associated with that regulation strategy.

“If someone used the exact same strategy all the time, you would just see one number in the matrix, and all the rest of the matrix would be ‘0,’” Moulder says, whereas someone who constantly switched from one regulation strategy to the next would have numbers all over his or her matrix.

These transition matrices provide two key metrics, Moulder explains: stability and spread. Higher stability means fewer regulation strategies; higher spread, more strategies. Subjects with high levels of trait neuroticism are therefore likely to have high stability.

Just-in-time interventions

With this information about their own emotion-regulation behaviors, subjects can see which strategies they use and reuse; they get a snapshot of their own stability and spread. If they find they’re putting the same strategies on repeat, they can decide to change things up—play pickleball instead of binge-eating pickles, for instance.

“There are some times when it makes sense to choose the same strategy,” Moulder says, “but we know from prior research that there are some times when it makes sense to become more adaptive—to increase, to spread, to try other things.”

Moulder adds that the knowledge gleaned from transition matrices can also be turned toward potentially more effective approaches to emotion regulation. He and Daniel call one idea “just-in-time interventions.”

“If we are, let’s say, giving individuals telehealth, which is a really big space right now for therapy, we want to do something called just-in-time interventions,” he says. By understanding a person’s regulation practices, “we can say to that person, ‘Hey, you keep going to drink almost every time something negative happens. Maybe this time go read a book or a call a friend.’ We can offer alternatives that research shows will lead to better outcomes.”

The power of such interventions lies in their precision. They’re based not purely on statistics, Moulder says, but on “person-specific analysis, which we can use to give people personalized messaging that would ideally best help them in the long run.”

There’s no guarantee that switching strategies will bring the desired outcome, Moulder admits, but experimentation is part of the process. “We’re never going to know what works until we try.”

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In a recent study, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Robert Moulder and colleagues find that individuals with trait neuroticism rarely modify how they respond to negative emotions.

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Historian Henry Lovejoy wins $60,000 NEH fellowship

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:41:10 +0000

Historian Henry Lovejoy wins $60,000 NEH fellowship Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/15/2025 - 17:41

NEH funding also was awarded for two other humanities projects at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��

University of Colorado Boulder Department of History Associate Professor Henry Lovejoy has won a $60,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to allow him to research and write a book about involuntary African indentured labor between 1800 and 1914.

Lovejoy’s research focuses on the political, economic and cultural history of Africa and the African Diaspora. He also has special expertise in digital humanities and is director of the Digital Slavery Research Lab, which focuses on developing, linking and archiving open-source data and multi-media related to the global phenomenon of slavery and human trafficking.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of History Associate Professor Henry Lovejoy has won a $60,000 NEH fellowship to research and write a book about involuntary African indentured labor between 1800 and 1914.

Additionally, Lovejoy spearheaded the creation and update of the website www.liberatedafricans.org, a living memorial to the more than 700,000 men, women and children who were “liberated” but not immediately freed in the British-led campaign to abolish African slave trafficking.

The term “Liberated Africans” coincides with a now-little-remembered part of history following the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 by the United Kingdom’s Parliament, which prohibited the slave trade within the British Empire (although it did not abolish the practice of slavery until 1834).

Around the same time, other countries—including the United States, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands—passed their own trafficking laws and operated squadrons of ships in the Atlantic and Indian oceans to interdict the slave trade.

However, in a cruel twist of fate, most of those “liberated” people weren’t actually freed—but were instead condemned as property, declared free under anti-slave trade legislation and then subjected to indentures lasting several years.

Lovejoy said the NEH fellowship is allowing him to take leave from work to write his book, focused on lax enforcement of anti-slavery laws, migratory patterns of African laborers, their enslavement and subsequent use as indentured laborers around the world from 1800 to 1914.

“I’m deeply grateful for being awarded this opportunity, as the NEH plays such a vital role in supporting the humanities by funding projects that foster our cultural understanding, historical awareness, and intellectual inquiry,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lovejoy said he is also writing a biography about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a “liberated African” who was apprenticed by Queen Victoria, after conducting research in royal, national and local archives in England, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Lovejoy also wrote the book Prieto: Yorùbá Kingship in Colonial Cuba During the Age of Revolutions, a biography of an enslaved African who rose through the ranks of Spain’s colonial military and eventually led a socio-religious institution at the root of an African-Cuban religion, commonly known as Santería.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Patrick Greaney (left) won a $60,000 NEH fellowship to research and write a book about German manufacturer Braun; Wilma Doris Loayza (right), teaching assistant professor in the Latin American and Latinx Studies Center, along with co-project directors Joe Bryan, Leila Gomez and Ambrocio Gutierrez Lorenzo, won a two-year, $149,925 grant to develop course modules and educational resources about Quechua and Zapotec language and culture.

Lovejoy’s NEH fellowship was one of three NEH awards to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� faculty. Other awards granted were:

Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Professor Patrick Greaney won a $60,000 fellowship to research and write a book about German manufacturer Braun, National Socialism and the creation of West German culture between1933-1975, focusing on Braun from the beginning of the Nazi regime through the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany. Greaney’s research focuses on literature, design and modern and contemporary art.

Wilma Doris Loayza, teaching assistant professor at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Center, and affiliated faculty of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, along with co-project directors Joe Bryan, Leila Gomez and Ambrocio Gutierrez Lorenzo, won a two-year, $149,925 grant to develop course modules and educational resources about Quechua and Zapotec language and culture as part of efforts to expand and strengthen the Latin American Indigenous Languages and Cultures program.

The awards to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� faculty were part of $22.6 million in grants the NEH provided to 219 humanities projects across the country. The awards were announced Tuesday.

“It is my pleasure to announce NEH grant awards to support 219 exemplary projects that will foster discovery, education, and innovative research in the humanities,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe.

“This funding will strengthen our ability to preserve and share important stories from the past with future generations, and expand opportunities in communities, classrooms, and institutions to engage with the history, ideas, languages, and cultures that shape our world.”

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NEH funding also was awarded for two other humanities projects at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��.

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Exploring selfish incentives for pursuing climate policy

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 01:02:56 +0000

Exploring selfish incentives for pursuing climate policy Rachel Sauer Mon, 01/13/2025 - 18:02

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� economist Alessandro Peri makes the case that empowering the young can meaningfully affect climate policy and climate outcomes

The consensus opinion in previous research—that future generations are the major beneficiaries of proactive climate policies—tends to emphasize the importance of intergenerational altruism. However, that perspective largely ignores the idea that selfish incentives of current young and old generations can be an important driver to undertake climate policy, says Alessandro Peri, assistant professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Economics.

Recent studies indicate that peak global warming occurs within a decade of emissions. Thus, current climate policy could benefit young generations later in their lifetimes, says Peri, a macroeconomist whose research focus includes computational and environmental economics.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� economist Alessandro Peri argues that selfish incentives of current young and old generations can be an important driver to undertake climate policy.

Meanwhile, climate policy may benefit the current old generations by reducing the damages associated with climate change and therefore increasing the value of their assets.

In the paper, “Selfish Incentives for Climate Policy: Empower the Young!” recently published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Peri and his two co-authors advanced what they say is the first study to examine the direction and magnitude of the selfish incentives of young and old to undertake climate policy.

In the economic model Peri and his co-authors developed, the younger generation (ranging from infants to those aged 35) and the older generation are both part of solutions addressing the climate crisis. The older generation tends to control most of the world’s physical assets, such as factories, he notes.

“What we found after we analyzed, theoretically and quantitively, this question of selfish incentives for climate policy is that incentives of the younger generation can be an important driver for climate policy to address the challenge of global warming,” says Peri.

Abatement measures related to reduced carbon emissions can affect the asset owners’ wealth and, accordingly, the old generation’s selfish incentives to support or oppose climate policy, but the effect is quantitatively small. Hence, Peri says, the exhortation in the title: “Empower the Young!”

When climate policy is a win-win

To explore the selfish incentives for climate policy, the model Peri and his co-authors developed uses a two-generation overlapping generations model, rather than the more common infinitely lived agent model. Peri says the two-generation structure permits a clear distinction between the two types of self-interest: the younger generation’s concern for its future consumption and the older generation’s desire to protect its wealth.

For the incentives of the current young and old generations to undertake climate policy to be aligned (a win-win situation), climate policy must increase the value of the assets owned by the old generations.

“Think about it like if you own a house in front of a lake,” Peri explains. “You don't really like the lake, but someone else decides to clean the lake. Well, the value of your house close to the lake is going to increase; you’re going to benefit indirectly from the cleaning of the environment on your wealth. The (increase) of this price allows the older generations to engage in climate policy and be happy about climate policy.”

For this to happen, Peri and his co-authors created an economic model that uses endogenous asset prices, relaxing the assumption of fixed asset price adopted by most models in the climate literature.

As wealth is transferred from the older generation to the younger one, for the asset price to increase it has to be the case that current young generations want to save more.

“With the new evidence that has shown that emissions today will have an impact in our lifetime in terms of global warming, we wanted to add our new part … looking at how selfish incentives can help mitigate this great human challenge," says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Alessandro Peri.

“They (the young) are willing to consume a little bit less today and save for tomorrow, so that they can consume more tomorrow,” as a result of climate policy, Peri says. “And what we show is that for that to happen, it means the young have to have a high elasticity of intertemporal substitution, which is just a fancy way of saying that they are willing to transfer more consumption from today to tomorrow” as a result of the effect of climate policy on the value of consumption over time.

Still, based upon the results of computational research done for the research paper, Peri says he and his co-authors determined that selfish incentives for the younger generation proved more quantitatively important for climate policy than those of the old generation.

Goal to spur further research and discussions

Peri says he hopes the economic model for addressing climate change that he and his co-authors created will complement existing research on economic policy related to climate change, including those that rely on altruistic motivations. He says he does not expect lawmakers to adopt the model as policy, but he hopes the paper will spur further research by economists and prompt discussions among policymakers.

Discussions about combatting climate change are particularly timely now, Peri says, given that in 2024 the temperature of the earth reached 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than in the pre-industrial era—before heat-trapping fossil fuels began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Paris Climate Accords, signed by representatives for numerous countries in 2016, aims to keep warming below that level when looking over multiple years.

“This is the great challenge we are facing nowadays, with the announcement in 2024 that we reached 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. So, it’s been the hottest year that we’ve observed since the pre-industrial era,” Peri says. “With the new evidence that has shown that emissions today will have an impact in our lifetime in terms of global warming, we wanted to add our new part … looking at how selfish incentives can help mitigate this great human challenge.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� economist Alessandro Peri makes the case that empowering the young can meaningfully affect climate policy and climate outcomes.

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Thank bacteria for your innate immune responses to viruses

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 18:43:14 +0000

Thank bacteria for your innate immune responses to viruses Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/10/2025 - 11:43

Blake Puscher

University of Colorado Boulder scientists review the evidence for the bacterial origin of eukaryotic immune pathways

Scientists generally agree that eukaryotes, the domain of life whose cells contain nuclei and that includes almost all multicellular organisms, originated from a process involving the symbiotic union of two prokaryotes: an archaeon and a bacterium. It is unsurprising, then, that prokaryotes (single-celled organisms lacking nuclei and organelles) share many basic features—such as DNA genomes, cell membranes and cytoplasm—with eukaryotes; they developed these traits first and passed them down.

However, if the situation is this (relatively) simple, then the different kingdoms of eukaryotic life—animals, plants and fungi—should all have some variation of the same essential traits.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers Hannah Ledvina (left) and Aaron Whiteley reviewed research that suggested a phenomenon known as horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotes.

By reviewing the research on this subject, two University of Colorado Boulder scientists have demonstrated that this is not the case with respect to elements of the innate immune system that come from bacteria. Rather, some of the eukaryotic kingdoms have these elements while others do not. This is suggestive of a more obscure phenomenon known as horizontal gene transfer.

As authors of a recently published review article, Aaron Whiteley, the principal investigator of the Aaron Whiteley Lab and an assistant professor of biochemistry, and postdoctoral fellow Hannah Ledvina were not involved in most of the research used to draw this conclusion, and were not the first to come to it, but write to summarize the state of the field and provide clarity by aggregating sources.

Categories of immune system

There are two categories of immune systems: innate and adaptive. Both exist within an individual because they serve distinct purposes. The adaptive immune system is more effective at eliminating viruses than the innate immune system, Whiteley says, but the innate immune system also plays an important role.

“We all know that you start feeling sick maybe one or two days after you were exposed to most viruses,” he says. “In the beginning, part of the reason you feel sick is because your first line of defense, the innate immune system, is trying to buy as much time as possible for the adaptive immune system.”

It is hard to successfully fight a virus without the antibodies and other virus-specific cells created by the adaptive immune system, Whiteley explains, but the generalized response of the innate immune system is necessary to slow the progression of disease during the time it takes for the adaptive immune system to respond.

By studying the innate immune system, scientists have found connections between the immune systems of bacteria and those of humans.

“We only started sequencing large numbers of genomes about 20 years ago,” Whiteley says, “and before we sequenced any genome, it was very hard to compare two organisms.” When some genomes became available, rudimentary comparisons were possible, “but as of maybe 10 years ago, our detection techniques for similarities of genes have skyrocketed,” and this has made comparisons like the ones in Whiteley and Ledvina’s review possible in combination with the sequencing of many more genomes.

Conserved immune pathways

“What we’ve been finding is the way that bacteria stop phages is very similar to the ways that humans fight off their pathogens,” Ledvina says. “The same proteins, as well as the same types of signaling pathways, are being used.”

"We know that the world of the immune system is so much bigger than viruses. Our immune system controls cancer, our immune system is important for wound healing and our immune system also restricts bacterial pathogens.”

Ledvina and Whiteley highlight four such types of signaling pathways of the innate immune system that are conserved between bacteria and either humans or humans and plants: cGAS-STING, NACHT and STAND NTPases, viperins and TIR.

A signaling pathway is a series of chemical reactions between a group of molecules in a cell that collectively control a cell function. The two basic elements of a signaling pathway are sensor and effector proteins: sensors detect the presence of a virus or phage and start the signaling cascade that ends with the activation of an effector, which is responsible for some form of immune response.

In the first type of signaling pathway, bacteria use the same sensor and effector proteins, cGAS and STING, to respond to phages as humans use to respond to DNA viruses (e.g., smallpox-like viruses).

In the second type of signaling pathway, Whiteley says, bacteria sometimes use the exact same protein domain, NACHT, as humans. NACHT is a subtype of STAND NTPase, a class of protein. In other cases, bacteria use different STAND NTPase subtypes, and plants use this protein class too.

A third type of signaling pathway found in eukaryotes and bacteria uses an effector protein called viperin. Similarly, in the fourth type of signaling pathway, the signaling domain TIR is used by plants, humans and bacteria.

Horizontal gene transfer

The relationships between the immune systems of humans and bacteria are especially interesting, Whiteley says, because these four pathways are likely to have been passed to eukaryotes by horizontal rather than vertical gene transfer.

Eukaryotes have many genetic similarities to bacteria, including in terms of the immune system. This, Whiteley explains, is because “things like the mitochondria, which is a really important organelle within all our cells, look like they came from a bacterium that started living inside the cell and then became a permanent resident.”

In other words, bacteria are ancestors of eukaryotes, and therefore many of the genes from bacteria were passed down to eukaryotes through vertical gene transfer, which is the transfer of genes from ancestors to progeny. However, shared genes can also be transferred horizontally.

Bacteria are ancestors of eukaryotes, and therefore many of the genes from bacteria were passed down to eukaryotes through vertical gene transfer, which is the transfer of genes from ancestors to progeny, explains ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Aaron Whiteley. (Illustration: Shutterstock)

The exact mechanism for this type of transfer is unknown, Whiteley says, but the formation of mitochondria may provide a model: “You can imagine something similar, where a bacterium went into a cell, only rather than taking up residence, it broke open and released its genome. DNA is DNA, so it can be incorporated from exotic sources, albeit rarely.”

It is hard to be certain about this because of how long ago it would have happened, according to Whiteley. Eukaryotes lacking a given immune pathway may have used it at one point but then lost it through an evolutionary process like stabilizing selection, which removes traits that are no longer useful in order to free up resources (the classic example being fish or other animals that lose their eyes because they live in dark places like caves).

There is, however, significant evidence for horizontal gene transfer, Whiteley says. “If you find that a gene is in animals, but it's not in all the cousins of animals like plants or fungi,” as was the case with these immune pathways, “then the simplest explanation is that it was transferred in.”

This is all to say that these pathways evolved in bacteria after the creation of the first eukaryotes and were introduced to some of the eukaryotic kingdoms after the last eukaryotic common ancestor, which was about 2 billion years ago.

That kind of interaction is important because it’s how antibiotic resistance forms, Whiteley explains. “Bacteria in the hospital talk to other bacteria and they swap genes. We think about that all the time between bacteria, but we rarely think about it between different domains of life, like going from bacteria into, in this case, some ancestor of a human cell from a billion years ago, and that has real impacts.”

Immune evasion and drug development

According to Ledvina, there are at least four different ways for viruses to prevent immune systems from sensing and inhibiting them. These include preventing critical enzymes from functioning, destroying the products of such enzymes, blocking protein sensors by mimicking whatever activates them, and physically shielding the features that immune systems look for to identify viruses. This is true of both the viruses that make us sick and the viruses that infect bacteria.

One question that people always ask, Whiteley says, is “if our immune system is so great, why are we still getting sick? And it's because viruses find every way possible to maintain the upper hand.

“The wild thing is, I guess because the immune system of humans and bacteria looks so similar, the viruses of humans and bacteria have come up with shared strategies for that immune evasion. So, we can discover things in bacteria, but then go to human viruses and understand, are they also using this mimic strategy? And if so, that becomes a great antiviral strategy for drug development.”

Bacteria are particularly useful for testing, he explains, because they grow fast and because scientists have already developed genetic and biochemical tools with which to study them. These advantages and the similarities between bacterial and human immune systems mean that bacteria could inspire drugs to treat human viruses.

However, Whiteley says, “we know that the world of the immune system is so much bigger than viruses. Our immune system controls cancer, our immune system is important for wound healing and our immune system also restricts bacterial pathogens.”

This is what makes Hannah Ledvina’s research on ubiquitin-like proteins interesting. As demonstrated in a paper she worked on, bacteria have ubiquitin pathways resembling those in eukaryotes, and ubiquitin is broadly important in humans according to an article in Cell Death & Differentiation, such that its failure is associated with the development of cancer, immune disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases, among other things. As that article points out, this means there may be new therapeutic opportunities within the ubiquitin system.

“I think with Hannah's work,” Whiteley says, “we've shown the sky's the limit in terms of understanding the ways bacteria defend themselves, and then hopefully informing the way that human cells defend themselves.”

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University of Colorado Boulder scientists review the evidence for the bacterial origin of eukaryotic immune pathways.

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‘She remains a touchstone’

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 18:42:08 +0000

‘She remains a touchstone’ Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/09/2025 - 11:42

Clay Bonnyman Evans

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� anthropologist says ‘Lucy’ is pivotal to the science of human origins a half-century after her discovery

A half-century after her discovery in Ethiopia, the 3.2-million-year-old hominin popularly known as “Lucy” remains a critical touchstone in humanity’s understanding of its origins.

Matt Sponheimer, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of anthropology, notes that the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy is "instantly recognizable in a world awash in fossils."

Officially labeled A.L.288-1, Lucy extended humanity’s ancient history by almost a million years, and she remains a standard to which decades of discoveries have been compared.

“Lucy is instantly recognizable in a world awash in fossils,” says Matt Sponheimer, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of anthropology whose research focuses on the ecology of early hominins from the African continent. “She is in many ways a touchstone.”

American anthropologist Donald Johanson first noticed what appeared to be a human-like elbow while out looking for fossils with a graduate student on Nov. 24, 1974, at Afar, Ethiopia, and soon spied multiple fragments nearby. He and his team eventually unearthed 47 remarkably well-preserved bones—about 40% of a complete skeleton—including skull fragments, a mandible with teeth, ribs and pieces of an arm, leg, pelvis and spine.

Lucy was eventually revealed to be an early hominin—a member of a hominid subfamily that includes humans, chimps and bonobos—with a brain about one-third to one-fourth the size of modern humans who walked upright. Research suggests that Lucy’s kind thrived in a wide range of ecosystems, from woodlands to grasslands and riverine forests.

Sharing characteristics of both Australopithecus africanus, a previously discovered hominin from South Africa, and chimpanzees, Lucy was assigned to a new species, Australopithecus afarensis.

Lucy's well-preserved skeleton, comprising about 40% of her body, provided unprecedented insights into early hominin anatomy.

A singular discovery

When Lucy was discovered, she was “singular,” Sponheimer says. But subsequent research has uncovered hundreds of fossils from Australopithecus afarensis as well as other distinct hominin species and footprints of bipedal hominins preserved in volcanic ash.

A sculptural reconstruction of the hominin known as Lucy by artist Elisabeth Daynes. (Photo: Elisabeth Daynes)

Despite fifty years of major discoveries, anthropological consensus still considers Lucy a likely ancestor to modern humans.

Beyond her monumental significance to the scientific understanding of human origins, Lucy has played a key role in educating people about evolution and anthropology.

Her fame and wide recognition have helped spur generations of children’s and students’ interest in the field. Johanson’s best-selling 1981 book, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, is still widely read by popular audiences.

“A huge number of anthropologists were inspired by that book,” Sponheimer says. “When I read it, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is the kind of thing I would like to pursue.’”

Years later, he considers not just anthropology but also research in the broader humanities, arts and sciences to be critical to human knowledge and flourishing. He cautions against the unforeseen consequences of American culture’s gradual shift to a more instrumental, economic view of the world.

“Exploring is part of what it means to be human. What’s more human than experiencing wonder and trying to understand the world around us? Tens of thousands of years of archaeology teaches us that. Channeling exploration into a narrow economic field of vision misses the point, I think, and is ultimately self-defeating on the economic front,” he says.

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� anthropologist says ‘Lucy’ is pivotal to the science of human origins a half-century after her discovery.

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Top image: model of a Australopithecus afarensis skull (Photo: iStock)

Rebuilding lives after the headlines fade

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 20:03:03 +0000

Rebuilding lives after the headlines fade Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/08/2025 - 13:03

Cody DeBos

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Lori Peek emphasizes that the impact of natural disasters can be multiplicative

Six-year-old Samantha’s new ballet slippers, ready for her first dance class, sat untouched as Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans in 2005. Five years later, another disaster—the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—compounded her family’s challenges.

“Losing everything and having to start over, that has happened to me so many times, it just feels like I lost my childhood,” she reflected when talking with Lori Peek, University of Colorado Boulder Department of Sociology professor.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Lori Peek (center) with participants in the Gulf Coast-based youth empowerment program called SHOREline, which she co-created and that was designed to make fundamental changes in the lives of youth and their communities, including reducing inequality before and after natural disasters.

Stories like Samantha’s illuminate a deeper truth: The harm caused by disasters doesn’t fade when the news cycle moves on. Hers is one of many stories Peek has heard while conducting research for more than a decade in the Gulf Coast region.

Peek, who also serves as director of ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Natural Hazards Center, has dedicated her career to understanding how disasters shape the lives of children and families.

Out of the spotlight, families across the country are fighting against systemic challenges, emotional tolls and inadequate support to get their lives back on track. Peek’s research focuses not just on immediate devastation, but also on the long road to recovery that so many disaster survivors must travel.

The compounding effects of disaster

Most natural hazards leave visible scars when they sweep across a landscape—flooded homes, shattered schools and shuttered businesses. Peek’s ethnographic approach reveals the experiences of people and the hidden struggles they face while navigating the aftermath of major disasters.

Her long-term, collaborative research along the Gulf Coast, recently highlighted in a Journal of Child and Family Studies article titled “Adverse Effects of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Amid Cumulative Disasters: A Qualitative Analysis of the Experiences of Children and Families,” underscores how compounded disasters can upend entire communities for decades.

“One disaster can obviously wreak havoc on a young person’s life,” Peek explains. “But now we are living in an age of extremes, where families and communities may be affected by multiple disasters in a relatively short period.

“The impact of these events isn’t additive—it’s multiplicative.”

Peek’s longitudinal study of Gulf Coast children illustrated this phenomenon. After Hurricane Katrina, countless families were just beginning to rebuild their lives when the Deepwater Horizon spill once again devastated local economies and ecosystems.

Children like Samantha, Peek notes, are particularly vulnerable in such contexts. They absorb not only the immediate chaos of a disaster but also the long-term stress of financial insecurity, familial upheaval, displacement and disrupted support systems.

Peek and her co-authors use the term “toxic stress” to describe this chronic strain. Its effects can lead to serious health and developmental challenges that persist for years—or a lifetime.

Lori Peek, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center, conducts fieldwork with a child after Hurricane Katrina; the child was later affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill as well.

Samantha’s story isn’t isolated. Rather, it’s one of many narratives underscoring the profound sense of loss that lingers long after the immediate crisis concludes.

Peek believes these stories must be heard and addressed if communities and families are to build resilience against future disasters.

“Until relatively recently, the recovery phase of disaster was the most understudied,” she says. “That started to change after Katrina. But now we are in a new era, where disasters are becoming more severe and intense, and communities are being hit more often.”

This not only makes studying disasters more complicated, but it also can lead to recovery resources being averted just when they are needed most, she adds.

The role of support systems

Peek’s research emphasizes that recovering from a disaster cannot be an individual journey. Robust support systems are necessary.

“For children to recover from disasters, they need support from their family members, peers, teachers and broader community. Strong institutions—such as stable housing, quality health care and safe schools—are equally crucial,” she says.

Yet many children lack these foundational supports even before disaster strikes, Peek notes. When a catastrophe does occur, it magnifies pre-existing inequalities, and vulnerable families often find themselves in even more precarious situations.

On the bright side, Peek says, “disasters can be catalysts for change. But only if recovery funding is targeted toward the people and places that need it most.”

A call to action

Peek’s findings highlight the imperative to ensure that recovery efforts reduce inequalities both before and after disasters occur. She co-created a Gulf Coast-based youth empowerment program called SHOREline that was designed to make such fundamental changes in the lives of youth and their communities.

By bringing together policymakers, educators and community leaders, Peek aims to create frameworks that protect communities before the next disaster strikes.

She also emphasizes the importance of not just studying disaster recovery but acting before communities are devastated by the next hurricane, flood or wildfire. To achieve this, Peek advocates for policies that prioritize equity and resilience, emphasizing the need for long-term planning and cross-sector collaboration.

"One disaster can obviously wreak havoc on a young person’s life. But now we are living in an age of extremes, where families and communities may be affected by multiple disasters in a relatively short period."

“Recovery frameworks are still designed as if a single disaster is affecting a place, and as if recovery is occurring in a neat, stepwise fashion. That’s simply not the reality.”

Through her work, Peek hopes to reshape how communities and policymakers approach disaster recovery. As Samantha’s story reminds us, disasters leave marks that linger far beyond the headlines. The disruption of her childhood dreams reveals a profound need for systems that protect society’s most vulnerable.

With the right support, Peek notes, children like Samantha can regain their footing and even thrive in the aftermath of disaster.

Peek’s vision for the future—one where no child’s dreams are washed away by hurricanes or tarnished by oil spills— enters on resilient communities safeguarded by robust support systems and programs that address systemic issues rooted in poverty and racial inequality.

“If we can use the small windows for change opened by disasters to make progress in reducing—rather than exacerbating—inequality and suffering, that would be a real win for current and future generations.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Lori Peek emphasizes that the impact of natural disasters can be multiplicative.

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Top image: Lori Peek with participants in the SHOREline program

American Philosophical Association recognizes Iskra Fileva for op-ed

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 15:31:25 +0000

American Philosophical Association recognizes Iskra Fileva for op-ed Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/03/2025 - 08:31

Fileva, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of philosophy, won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest

Iskra Fileva, an associate professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Philosophy, has won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest from the American Philosophical Association for her blog “Is It Hubris to Think We Matter?”

Fileva’s article was originally published in 2023 in Psychology Today, for which she is a regular contributor. With her permission, the article was later reposted on the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine website.

Iskra Fileva, an associate professor in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Philosophy, has won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest from the American Philosophical Association.

Fileva specializes in moral psychology and issues at the intersection of philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. She also studies aesthetics and epistemology. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophers’ Imprint, Philosophical Studies and Synthese.

In addition to her academic work, Fileva writes for a broad audience, including op-eds for the New York Times. She writes a column in Psychology Today that has addressed a wide variety of topics, including perfectionism, self-sabotage, parents who envy their children, asymmetrical friendships, love without commitment, fear of freedom, death, dreams, despair and many others.

In announcing the award, the American Philosophical Association noted that winning submissions “call public attention, either directly or indirectly, to the value of philosophical thinking” and were judged in terms of sound reasoning and “their success as examples of public philosophy,” as well as their accessibility to the general public on topics of public concern.

Fileva said she’s pleased with the reception the article received and honored to be recognized by the American Philosophical Association.

“Receiving the public philosophy award was a very nice way to end the year,” she said. “It also drew attention to the essay, and I heard from people who read it and who likely would not have found it otherwise. It took me a day or so to re-read it as I don’t, in general, know what I would think of anything I’ve written several months ago, but I did re-read it, and I was happy to discover that I still agreed with what I’d written.”

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Fileva, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of philosophy, won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest.

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Meeting a little princess in the secret garden

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 23:46:38 +0000

Meeting a little princess in the secret garden Rachel Sauer Mon, 12/23/2024 - 16:46

Adamari Ruelas

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Associate Professor Emily Harrington examines the enduring power of stories we read in childhood and what we can learn from them as adults

When many people think of December, their minds are filled with thoughts of snow, warm drinks, family and childhood. This is the time of year when memories of childhood bubble to the surface—burnished by time to seem simpler and happier.

For avid childhood readers, a profound element of those memories is the books they read in their youth, which can continue to play a significant role in their adult lives. Frances Hodgson Burnett, who died 100 years ago this fall, was the author of such books—the kind that young readers devour and still swoon over in adulthood.

“In these books like The Secret Garden, the kids are the ones who are empowered to figure things out for themselves and who are in worlds that are magical or partially magical. That kind of magic attaches itself to the kids,” says Emily Harrington, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of English.

Her most famous works, including A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, continue to be fan favorites for young children and books that many adults consider the beginning of their reading careers.

Remembering Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett is a household name in the world of children’s literature. Her beloved novels are perennially popular with children and have been made into multiple film adaptations. However, says Emily Harrington, an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, who has taught a course on children’s literature, it is important to critically examine even the beloved books of childhood—not allowing memory to obscure what adult readers may recognize as controversial aspects of children’s literature.

Critics and educators have been noted how Hodgson Burnett portrayed characters of color in her novels. For example, in The Secret Garden, the character Mary is unhealthy because she grew up in India. Martha, a sympathetic character, contrasts people of color with "respectable” white people. Modern readers have questioned the effect that could have had on the children reading these stories.

Harrington notes it’s important to teach the novels in a way that doesn’t dismiss their issues: “Both (A Little Princess and The Secret Garden) have some super problematic, racist attitudes. It’s not why they’re remembered but I think it’s important to acknowledge,” Harrington says.

When looking back on novels written in the early 20th century, it isn’t uncommon to discover undertones of racism or sexism.

Some argue that racism was more normalized at the time some books were written, but even in the context of a work’s time, it is important to recognize and consider these issues when they exist in novels written for children, Harrington says. She also notes Burnett’s questionable views about medicine, which are apparent in The Secret Garden, when a wheelchair-bound child is able to walk after a little exposure to fresh air. Burnett believed that nature and God were the solution to most medical issues, which can change the meaning of the Secret Garden as being a magical place outside that fixes all medical ailments.

A lifetime effect

However, even if some of their content makes a modern reader pause, the novels that young readers enjoy can have lasting echoes in their lives as adults. Childhood fans of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and many other novels may continue to visit those worlds in their minds as adults or to wish they could be transported by books in the way they were as children. This includes Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novels, which many readers continue loving into adulthood. A large part of this connection is how the books made young readers feel while reading them, Harrington says.

“In these books like The Secret Garden, the kids are the ones who are empowered to figure things out for themselves and who are in worlds that are magical or partially magical. That kind of magic attaches itself to the kids,” Harrington says.

"All the people who enjoy these books can take the parts that they love and keep them," says Emily Harrington, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of English. (Illustration: by Inga Moore from The Secret Garden)

Due to this escape that children can experience while reading these novels, the stories, characters and places can stay with them into adulthood. It isn’t rare to see someone who is still as deeply infatuated with novels such as A Little Princess or The Secret Garden as an adult because those books have been those escapes for many generations of children. And as parents or grandparents read these novels to children, the cycle continues, and the literary love is passed to new generations.

Even with Hodgson Burnett’s questionable beliefs, as well as aspects of her novels that trouble modern readers, readers still are able to take the best parts of these magical worlds and make them their own, Harrington says. That, in turn, allows the children who read them to make these fictional worlds their own, she adds.

She notes that this is a process that many children experience while reading these novels as a form of escapism: “[As they grow up, children may think] ‘This magical world is mine now, and it’s not going to be racist or anti-trans. I’m gonna imagine myself in it in my own way and reject the parts of the legacy that I don’t want.’

“All the people who enjoy these books can take the parts that they love and keep them, and hopefully had enough alternate influences that counteract the colonialist ideology,” Harrington says, citing common issues with The Secret Garden and A Little Princess.

Best friends forever

For many avid childhood readers, books have been a major part of their lives for as long as they can remember and the characters in them their lifelong friends. Those reading experiences can transfer deeply into their adult lives, especially when correlating reading with comfort, Harrington says.

Further, a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine last year found multiple points of positive correlation between early reading for pleasure with subsequent brain and cognitive development and mental well-being. Also, the most recent Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report finds that while 70% of 6- to 8-year-olds love or like reading books for fun, that number shrinks to just 47% among 12- to 17-year olds.

R. Joseph Rodriguez, a teaching fellow with the National Book Foundation, told NEA Today, “The joy of books has been killed. Suppressed, tested and killed. I hate when students are called ‘struggling readers.’ We need to see them as students who need a revival! I want a revival!”

Educators, researchers, parents, health care professionals and children themselves study and discuss how to support and encourage reading—from alleviating testing pressure to proving time and space for reading, supporting diversity in children’s literature and not dismissing the literature that children actually enjoy as “frivolous.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Associate Professor Emily Harrington examines the enduring power of stories we read in childhood and what we can learn from them as adults.

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Top illustration by Inga Moore, 1944

Outstanding grad unearths roots of challenges to Black women authors

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 15:10:36 +0000

Outstanding grad unearths roots of challenges to Black women authors Rachel Sauer Fri, 12/20/2024 - 08:10

Clint Talbott

Jane Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, is named the college’s outstanding graduate for fall 2024

Jane Forman has painstakingly recounted evidence that Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones and other prominent Black women authors have faced challenges to the authenticity and quality of their work, and that these critiques emanate from racist and sexist conceptions of who is rightly considered an author and an authority.

Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, deeply impressed her faculty committee, and she has been named the outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences for fall 2024.

Her thesis is titled “Deconstructing Archival Debris in the Margins: How Black Women Writers Navigate Intersectional Oppression During the Authorial Identity Formation Process.”

Jane Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, is the College of Arts and Science outstanding graduate for fall 2024.

In this work, Forman considers cases of Black women authors who were unfairly denigrated and rebuked because their intersectional identity made them targets. Forman cites troubling episodes of Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard; Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project; Toni Morrison, winner of a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize; and others.

When she spoke recently with Daryl Maeda, interim dean of the college, Forman described her thesis as a “contemplation of how our history continuously influences contemporary figurations of American life.”

In her thesis, she concludes: “The history of slavery is all of ours to confront, disregarding our contemporary racial and gender positionality in America. The virulent debris that emerged from slavery’s formal demolition continues to infect society today … We are all implicated in how this history attempts to exert influence over our collective present and future.”

Jennifer Ho, director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts, Eaton Professor of Humanities and the Arts and professor of ethnic studies, served as Forman’s thesis advisor. In her written narrative to the faculty thesis defense form, Ho said Forman’s thesis was made especially strong by her tracing of the “archival debris” across three periods of Black female authorship:

“Using critical race theory as her main theoretical touchstone, Jane considers the intersectional oppression that plagues Black women writers—the way that they must continuously navigate charges of plagiarism, incompetence and illegitimacy. Combining close reading/explication with theoretical applications of critical race theory, Jane takes readers through the troubling trend of discounting Black women writers due to sexism and racism, linked to U.S. history of anti-Black racism and white supremacy.”

In a letter of support for Forman, Emily Harrington, an associate professor of English who served on Forman’s committee, said Forman’s work “is easily the best senior thesis I have read during my career.”

Through all her thesis chapters, Forman “draws a direct connection between the various ways in which Black women authors have been questioned both in their authenticity and in the quality of their work, from the ‘first’ African American poet to the present day,” Harrington said, adding:

“Having also taken graduate seminars as an undergraduate, Jane is the most advanced undergraduate I have encountered at CU. … She has been a leader in our department, and I cannot think of a more ‘outstanding undergraduate.’”

In the acknowledgment section of her thesis, Forman shares some personal reflection and advice:

“For anyone uncertain of what they should do or where they should go, I urge you to follow the path that leads you toward the most expansive feeling. Three years ago, I dropped out of Georgetown University, unsure of what my life would be like. I didn’t know where I wanted to be, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. Despite the tumultuous journey that led me here, I feel eternally grateful for where I ended up.”

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Jane Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, is named the college’s outstanding graduate for fall 2024.

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